Cryptography is difficult. It combines mathematics, computer science, sometimes electrical engineering, and a twisted mindset that can figure out how to get around rules, break systems, and subvert the designers' intentions. Even very smart, knowledgeable, experienced people invent bad cryptography. In cryptography, there is security in following the crowd. A homegrown algorithm can't possibly be ...
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The complexity and long development time inherent in building decision support systems has thus far prevented their wide use. A new class of tools, DSS generators, seeks to cut the lead time between development and deployment. DSS generators provide tools that make it easier and faster to develop models, data, and user interfaces that are customized to the application's requirements. Using a DSS g...
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For several good business reasons, rapid application development has become increasingly popular. In general, RAD gives you earlier product payback and more payback time before the pace of technology makes your product obsolete. For software product sales, RAD also helps you debut a product earlier in a market window, which lets the product capture more market share, revenues, and profits. To gain...
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In response to shifting business demands, evolving information technologies play a key role in first reengineering and then reinventing GTE (telecommunications company). To illustrate the growing impact of IT within GTE, we chronicle the evolution of GTE's Network Management System (NMS). Although we focus primarily on the NMS, we broadly identify three major phases in the application of IT within...
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Did Deep Blue ace the Turing Test? Did it do much more? It seems that the IBM creation not only beat the reigning chess World Champion Gary Kasparov, but also took a large step, in some people's eyes, toward true artificial intelligence. For AI professionals, a computer defeating a human in chess is probably neither surprising nor really significant. After all, they contend, chess can be described...
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Jointly developed by the ISO and IEC in 1995, the ISO/IEC 12207 standard, Software Life Cycle Processes, provides specific guidance in defining the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders in the life cycle of a software project, product, or service. And the software community is beginning to take heed. The standard itself is relatively brief, detailing 17 processes in less than 40 pages...
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Information technology has made major strides this past decade, improving significantly the process of doing business. These changes have permeated every aspect of our lives from grocery shopping to banking to manufacturing to managing a profitable business. And the trend is expected to accelerate as we move into the new millennium
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Reliability is even more of an issue for scientific programmers than it is for other programmers. Since the correctness of a program is relative to its specification, the greatest difficulty of scientific programming is that the specification for a program is almost always an abstract mathematical or physical statement, not something specific. The way scientific programmers most frequently verify ...
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British Telecom's intranet hosts an array of information products that are an integral part of the way its employees do business. The article presents a glimpse of how BT uses concepts like media engineering to develop usable and maintainable information products-information by design. The BT intranet supports several information products that are now an everyday part of business within BT: the de...
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Although its role in manufacturing has keen move to support processes, IT is evolving to become a catalyst for process and product change. In this case study, an apparel manufacturer used an enterprise modeling framework (EMF) developed by Georgia Tech (USA) to implement multiple IT solutions. It was then able to rapidly shift production resources between two separate product lines
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Although its infrastructure is still very young, e-commerce continues to create new business models and innovative marketing and technology strategies. To avoid unraveling their core processes, organizations considering e-commerce applications must take time out to evaluate the many facets of adoption and integration. Arguments for not investing in e-commerce are rapidly dissolving. It is now wide...
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Aims & Scope

Computer, the flagship publication of the IEEE Computer Society, publishes peer-reviewed articles written for and by computer researchers and practitioners representing the full spectrum of computing and information technology, from hardware to software and from emerging research to new applications.